Since the Battle of the Beanfield in June '85, the campaign for Stonehenge Free Festival has been a very political affair, obscuring the true reasons for being at the Stones (rather than gathering anywhere else) at Midsummer. But in 1987 it was very much more a spiritual event, a pilgrimage, and in my mind an important part of a spiritual change that is happening all over. On a political level it was a successful piece of Non Violent Direct Action, which altered the atmosphere and did in fact make a Stonehenge Festival more likely for next year and/or the years to come; but essentially it was done for the Stones themselves, by people who felt themselves called there by the Stones.

Two of us, myself and Pixie, walked from Glastonbury to Stonehenge this Midsummer and we got there and into the Temple by ourselves, without tickets, without permission from the English Heritage or the police, without getting arrested, and without losing our dignity. Exactly how that happened is a longer story than would fit into this article; but it was a bit like threading a maze, or getting into the Grail castle and asking the right question - I mean for us (and for many other people in different way) going to the Stones has been a genuinely magical initiation. For us - especially when our brothers and sisters who'd been at Devil's Ditch were allowed in - the holy places were being opened.

I am aware of other people who are consciously carrying out actions and rituals to re-open ancient sacred sites this year; which is particularly interesting in relation to the Hopi prophecies - because that is what was prophesied for 1986. Strolling away from the Stones in the sunshine on Solstice morning, I thought about that, and saw a pattern, because in 1986 the most interesting event (for me) was the Green Field at Pilton Festival, where we had the Greens, the Rainbow Village, the Convoy, and some Greenham women, all groups who'd been arguing with each other in the past, communicating with each other and making friends, respecting each other in a new way and getting along fine. Which was the most important part of the Prophecy for 1985 - "Human to human communication."

I think it does need saying that the 'Hopi Prophecies' have very little to do with the Hopis. They come from Harley Swiftdeer, who so far as I know ids half Cherokee and half Irish-American. So they're almost as much Celtic as North American. And they were first made widely public, along with the notion of the 'Rainbow Warrior,' by Geenpeace. I feel very much at home with these prophecies: they are ours, essentially from our own new culture, related only by inference to any outside mystical tradition, either from the far East or from the far West. The Hopis themselves have their own prophecies, which don't contradict Swiftdeer's but which don't say the same things either, and which they'd prefer to keep to themselves.

For 1984, the [Swiftdeer] prophecies said that it would be 1984 in the George Orwell sense; and - in 1985 - we had the eviction from Molesworth, the Bean Field, and (in this part of the country) the long drawn-out saga of Greenlands Farm, when we were subjected to something no different from racial prejudice. So it seems that, at least in the cultural and geographical space that I inhabit, the prophecies are actually manifesting a year later. The prophecies themselves provide a positive vision of what could happen; and for those of us who take them to heart, they appear to initiative a process which produces tangible results after 12 months or so.

For some extremely enlightened beings it might be immediate, and for society in general it might take longer; however, for 1987/88 the interesting thing is these 144,000 Rainbow Warriors ... 144,000 is a number that crops up all over the place, and for me it's shorthand for "a very large number," as big as a city or a festival or a tribe or an army, though only a fairly mall proportion of the whole population - enough to make a difference, or to act as a catalyst - maybe something similar to the "100th monkey" phenomenon, where if there's 14,000 people in the world all thoroughly tuned in to something new, and prepared to act on it, then nothing will stop the rest of the population waking up to it as well.

Anyway, my feeling about this August 16/17 [Harmonic Convergence] is that something along these lines could be set up in the ethers, ad that it cold have very dramatic results a year from now. The shape of those results is best not speculated upon by one person alone. There will be a multitude of different (but inter-related) groups and perspectives gathering together in different ways; the end results/new beginnings will be what we dream, between us and together, this August .

The Rainbow Warriors are us; and it's up to us to set about changing the world by dreaming dreams and turning them into reality. I think it's a good idea.